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Before we get started
Our inhibitor part aims to decrease the intrinsic ability of biofilm formation of S. mutans. In the human mouth, S. mutans tends to produce biofilm and acid product through metabolism. Biofilm provides a comfortable environment for S .mutans to survive and live in. Because of this, we try to decrease the formation of biofilm by S.mutans in order to decrease the chance of tooth decay.
So how did we do it?
Histidine kinase is a sensor kinase of two-component signal transduction system. According to literature search, deletion of histidine kinase will result in biofilm formation and resistance to acidic pH. Scanning electron microscopy also show that S. mutans forms sponge-like biofilm.
G protein in S. mutans(SGP) is involved in regulating the intracellular GTP/GDP ratio, response to stress condition, and other diverse cellular functions. Based on our paper search, deletion of SGP also showed that biofilm formation decreased.
We synthesized a 24 bp non-coding DNA and transcribed it into sRNA. This short sRNA will bind to the TIR (translation initiation region) of target mRNA and prevent the target mRNA from translating. We target two biofilm formation-related protein: one is histidine kinase and the other is G protein. According to literature search, defection of these two protein will dramatically decrease the biofilm formation of S. mutans. Another important feature is the MicC scaffold, which will recruit Hfq protein and help sRNA hybridize with target mRNA, while also stabilizing the sRNA-mRNA complex.
